


listening to hear where you are

by feelingtwofootsmall



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Black Lodge, F/M, Gen, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-11
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-01 04:07:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4005310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feelingtwofootsmall/pseuds/feelingtwofootsmall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in the Black Lodge, Cooper sees Annie die a thousand times. more than once he walks into the room just to find her body dead and silent on the floor, pulsing under sickening strobe lights. it seems the more he thinks about her, the more the visions appear, until even these things become a comfort. on second thought, Cooper isn't sure he knows the meaning of the word comfort anymore.</p><p>short loosely Dale/Annie loosely songfics related to Neutral Milk Hotel's "Two Headed Boy" and "Two Headed Boy Part 2"; taking place while Coop is in the Black Lodge in s02ep22, continuing post-series-- who knows how time works in the Lodge? not this author! POV switches between Annie in the hospital and Coop in the Lodge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	listening to hear where you are

Being in the Lodge is like floating in space, or being stoppered in a bottle. It’s claustrophobic and endless. Even when Dale’s eyes are closed, he can see everything: Black. White. Red. Flickering strobe lights. Screaming. Jazz. Everyone he’s ever known, loved. Smiling with white film over their eyes. Shapes moving behind curtains, shadows cast by things he can’t ever see. 

Walking or sprinting between rooms after his doppelganger has disappeared, Cooper thinks he must be going crazy. The things he sees, the things he thinks-- it’s tempting to think that the Lodge is making him like this. There are no nights here, no clocks, no way to tell how much time has passed except the exhaustion that pulls his eyelids down after long periods of time. Dale doesn’t think he sleeps here, or if he does, curled up on a red couch, he doesn’t dream. It’s tempting to think that these things are what’s making him think the way he’s been thinking—in deep red colors and sneaking evil suspicions—but then again, when was the last time Dale felt sane? Before Caroline? Before his mother died?  
Maybe he never did. Sitting on a chair in the waiting room of the Lodge, breathing heavily and trying to get his pulse back to normal, Dale isn’t sure he’s spent a single moment of his life like a normal person would. 

“Cooper, you’re crazy.” The voice in his head is a man’s, familiar but unnamable in this place. It filters through from a memory he can’t quite grasp. It was certainly years ago, maybe even before Caroline. Or during Caroline. That seems more likely. He recalls being called crazy more often then. More of the man’s gruff voice floats to the surface of his mind as he thinks about it. _Albert._ The voice belongs to Albert. He could almost cry with the recognition.

“Look, I know you can handle yourself,” says the memory in his head, clear as glass, “so don’t get me wrong Cooper, but you’re behaving like a lovesick imbecile. You’re going to get hurt.” God bless Albert. It’s too bad he’s not here in the Lodge. Though his memories are already sketchy at best, Dale has the feeling that if Albert came to this place, it would unexist itself in the face of his skepticism. Albert has many rare and valuable qualities; a strong belief in the supernatural is not one of them. 

It’s moments like these, caught breathlessly between the worlds of hurt that characterize this place, which hurt Dale the most. Remembering who he’s fighting for only makes the fight more difficult, in that he knows there is a price to pay if he loses. And yet these moments, sandwiched in between abject fear and misery, are kind to him. It’s as if the waiting room exists just to let him think for a split second that the evil has gone. That he’s won. On the contrary, it exists to remind him of what is waiting, and what is waiting is craziness and running and everyone he loves covered in blood. How long ago did he last see Albert? He doesn’t remember. Wishes that he could.

Before Dale can take another breath to steady himself, the lights begin to strobe and shapes flash behind the curtains, lazy triangles. Laughter. Flames. The memories begin to slip away, replaced by red curtains and slow syllables that sound wrong. Everything is red here. Everything is wrong here. _Diane, I’ve been stabbed. Diane, Caroline is dead. Diane, let me tell you about Annie Blackburn—_

As if taking a suggestion—is that how the Lodge works? Dale doesn’t know—someone who looks like Annie appears in front of him, holding a handgun. It looks like his own bureau-issued piece, but he can’t be sure.

“Annie,” he whispers, reaching out to touch her face.

“Dale,” she says, and then she opens her perfect red mouth and shoots herself through the back of the head.

“Annie,” he says again. There is blood pooling around his shoes. Is that how blood works here? He can’t remember how it works where he comes from. 

She sits up and then rises to her feet, covered in blood, but he doesn’t flinch. Dale has seen her die now more times than he can count, her face often morphing into Caroline’s or Windom’s or Laura’s halfway through. It’s the worst when she becomes Laura. Not shrieking banshee Laura, but the sad, drug-addled homecoming queen. Laura always watches him out the corner of her eyes. It makes him feel like he’s betrayed her. But now this vision is Annie, standing swaying in front of him, and it’s all he can do not to take her bloody body in his arms. Keep her safe. 

“Annie, I only wanted to keep you safe.” _You’re lying._ The voice could be his own, or it could belong to the room itself. He tries again. Why is it that his voice doesn’t come out like molasses here?

“I wanted to help you.” This seems more honest. The movements that have been fluttering on the edge of his vision stop, and the floor of the room seems to expand outwards. “I just wanted to help you,” and no matter how many times he has said this to her apparition or imagined form, every time it’s like his heart is breaking.

“Dale,” Annie says in that horrible, backwards Lodge-speak, “You never could have helped me,” and now she’s Laura, and Laura is crying. Dale has the awful idea to haul her up by her arms and throw her against the tile until she’s still. It’s not fair. He wants Annie back.

 _I WANT ANNIE._ What’s left of his mind grabs onto this, and the strobe lights stutter off. It’s like the Lodge is obeying him now, unless that’s another crazy thought. But he knows Annie. Annie or someone like her was just here. He saw his doppelganger carry her past the curtains and into the forest; Annie is safe now. Dale can see her in a hospital bed in his mind when he tries hard enough; whether this is a vision or a wish he doesn’t know. But he thinks often he can hear her, just behind the curtain. Always three steps ahead. When banshee Laura screams, he hears other words behind it. Simple words, like Dale, and coffee. _Annie is safe,_ these words tell him, _you saved her._

Dale knows this is a lie, knows that as long as his doppelganger, or BOB, or whatever is running around in a carbon copy of his body, is out there in the world, Annie is in danger. They all are. _God help them,_ he thinks, and he must sleep in the Lodge after all, because despite the atmosphere around him, it seems as if he’s drifting off. _God help them all._

When he wakes up on the cold floor, jazz is playing from silver speakers across the room, and Annie is back, dancing, her face shining like the moon. Dale listens hard to the whispers and mumblings that play behind the music, thinks he can hear a hospital monitor beeping and deep heavy breaths. He listens until Annie has fallen to the floor in front of him and the jazz has stopped, replaced by the grinding of thousands of unseen gears. Behind this he can still hear the sounds that he somehow knows come from where Annie is. He closes his eyes and lets the awful Lodge-thoughts overtake him, but the sounds only get louder in his ears. Steady beeping. Murmurs of words he can’t make out.

_I am listening, Annie. I will come for you. I am so, so sorry._

**Author's Note:**

> if it's of any interest, this fic works off my assumption that the version of Cooper we see at the end of the final episode isn't just Coop possessed by Bob, it's the doppelganger Cooper we meet in the Black Lodge, which would leave "real" Coop in the Lodge indefinitely, while Annie managed to leave & recover in the hospital. I don't know how much canonical sense that makes, as I haven't seen Fire Walk With Me yet, but there you are. lyrics to Two Headed Boy, the song that inspired this segment of fic, can be found here: http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/36469/
> 
> (look for a part two from Annie's perspective soon, and a further continuation of Coop's, if that is something you would like to look for)


End file.
